Red lines on display where black should be.

Having just read something about it and answered another question like this on here. I would think that it is either your backlight or your inverter board, if the cable is okay and the connections are intact. Defective backlight may have the following symptoms: Screen flashes on red/pink and goes off. Picture stays on in red and slowly be come normal. Inverter error may have the symptom off Picture flickering with dim display and Picture flickering on and off. Apparently most screen backlight problems are caused by failing inverters and not the screen backlight itself. So it's hard to say for sure exactly what the problem is. But, the inverter lights up the light in LCD panel. Your cheapest fix is to replace the inverter located in the LCD panel and if that doesn't work then the light is burned out in the LCD panel itself. Just my 2cents and I am most certainly not a Mac person, yet. good luck

I agree, Vatku is a genius. Had the same issue happen tonight with my 2010 i7 MB Pro. Closed the clamshell lid and pressed hard on the corner near the ESC key. Done! My wife was watching the whole thing and was impressed, too. I thought I was gonna have to take it to the Apple Store and pay them to fix it. NOT! Awesome work, Vatku!

My late 2006 15" Macbook Pro starting exhibiting the same problem a few days ago but then suddenly fixed itself. Not sure how but this is what happened.

I was watching a live streaming sports PPV on my Macbook Pro and had the video enlarged to full screen. Half way through the event my MBP fans started running louder and that's when the red line problem occurred. It was mainly in the blacks, dropshadows and dark colors of the screen. Tried rebooting, zapping pram, turned it off until the next morning and nothing seemed to work.

Read that it could be hardware issues and thought I might have broke something when a couple weeks ago I installed an SSD hard drive and replaced my dvd drive with the previous regular hard drive. But the thing is it was working perfectly until I started watching the PPV.

So a couple of days later I booted up again and the problem was still there and figured I'll open the machine up next weekend. In the mean time I started moving essential files from my standard HD to my SSD and saw a video I wanted to watch, so I installed the latest VLC on the new drive and after watching the video I noticed the red lines disappeared and my display is back to normal.

Not sure what fixed it or if the problem will come back, but I do remember when I was trying to stream the PPV I kept switching feeds and getting missing video plugin errors and the fans getting louder than normal. And the two things I did before I noticed it went back to normal was reinstalling Visual Hub and the latest VLC and watched a couple of .avi and .flv movies and now so far so good.

Vatku you are a genius. Had this issue on mid 2013 MBP - e.g.. (black screen on the graphic at the top if this page was red-lined), read your post & simply reached over and (quite gently) pressed the casing over the back-right corner (near exc key) - bam, lines vanished.

We'll see if it lasts, but meanwhile you've saved me a trip to a service centre - thank you!

I Just found a solution about this problem....

Open the back case of your macbook

Just push the VGA or Monitor cable down a little bit hard...(no need to unplug)

http://forums.macrumors.com/attachment.p...

It work for me as well...try it! ;)

I got this problem after simply opening my machine to inspect for damages on the DC board. I noticed that a small amount of glue (from remounting the nearby plastic foot) caught on the LCD cable, as I removed the back plate.

Simply detaching and reattaching the cable from the socket solved my problem.

My A1212 MacBook Pro just started doing this same thing this afternoon. I reseated both sides of the video cable to no avail. I ended up pulling the logic board and reflowing the X1600 chip. That took care of it. It started acting up while watching a streaming video, so "heatey"-come, "heatey"-go.

Sorry about that pun, I couldn't resist. Oh no, a double pun!

The LCD Pannel is the problem!!

I have a Sceptre monitor that displays anything that is black as horizontal red lines.

All other montiors/cables/computers work just fine, just a junk monitor

One of my macs has the same issue.

It's a Macbook Pro 15" Late 2006 MA610LL A1211

It's whether the screen cable's connector or the port on the logic board.

Whenever the black goes red I press down the keyboard, over the following buttons: [;'p

I don't feel like taking this laptop apart right now, but if the "pressure" workaround will keep working, I'll just open it up and apply couple of layers of electric black tape over the flex cable connection.

THIS IS THE ANSWER The nvidia graphics card has a recall on it for Mac Pro model # MA610LL, late 2006 models. Sold as 2007 models from early 2007 to end of 2007. I have been fighting apple for years to have this recall fixed under extended out of warranty repair. Also, when it was covered. Apple, would not replace the defective graphics card. They, APPLE, finally agreeded to do a covered white glove inspection and repair. As should have been done, while it was under warranty. Instead, they replaced a failing optic drive, with a third party optic drive. They did not even address the graphics problem. I got it back, shipped via fed ex. In a wet, BUSTED open apple repair box, from the abuse in transit and drop on front covered brick porch. Fed ex label torn away address part left. No Apple security tape present. Signature required according to apple. Fed ex just left it. No invoice detailing repair, what they did. And computer password changed. Apple could not give me the password, that they swear they did not change. So, I had to do a system restore. That worked. Then, the optic drive just replaced by apple failed day two while updating to snow leopard. It would not read the install CD. SO, APPLE SAID DO ANOTHER SYSTEM RESTORE. THE OPTIC DRIVE WOULD NOT READ SYSTEM RESTORE DISK 1 nor would it eject. So, I sent it back to them overnight . Apple, sent an email stating repair complete. They had my Mac pro model MA610LL , less than 48 hours. Nothing repaired. Systems disk still stuck in optic drive. I called them and was berated, belittled, & accused by a Senoir tech. He was accusing me of replacing the optic drive with a third party drive, that it had a third party hard drive in it and micro fractures In the logic board. And nothing wrong with graphics Card. I told them bull .... They gave me an estimate of 1,297.46 . I asked for a copy of that took 3 hours plus on phone passing me off. Finally, they sent it. So I could file a claim against Fed Ex. Apple and fed ex have a deal. If apple will not push claim the customer can not. Or even speak to fed ex. All the problems with this model MA610LL AND RELATED MODELS. Are all the same, overheating problems, unexplained red black graphics, and failed optic drives. They, Apple is aware of and they will not stand behind the know defects. Apple passes you off from tech to supervisor over and over and then slides it under the rug. Stating they have no record of your repairs, no notes nothing. If I had money I would legally per sue them. But I do not. So after going on 3 yrs of being passed off. I call it the great apple pass off. I am going to try to repair my Mac myself. I do not even know how to or where to start. I am glad I found this web site. I need instruction on how to open case to get to optic drive, hard drive, logic board and graphics card. I Have no clue what all this looks like. But it is being filmed for YouTube etc. And for my own purpose for putting it back together. Wish me luck any advice greatly appreciated. Also, I want to see all the third party components apple claims are inside my Mac.

Sorry to anyone pointing the problem at Macbook, but horizontal red lines is a monitor problem that is usually caused by only two things.

-Bad inverter cables/soldering

-Driver for different model/corrupt driver.

There can also be comptibility issues between the monitor and pc, but not very often (usually os related)

If you've got this problem try search for latest drivers. If you can manage to pry apart your monitor (unplugged for a day), Check the invertor cables are fully pushed in. If that fails try re-soldering the base connector bit. I had a 6 y o monitor that looked fine untill i wiggled the wire to find the plastic base on circuit board hanging by a thread. Dab of solder and it was good as new :)

Same problem here. I replaced the whole topcase with lcd and inverter board and same thing. I can't but think it is the logic board/ video card because when i drag the image over to my external no red lines? It also won't run a hardware test which in my experience is logic board failure.

Macbook Pro1,1

Intel Core Duo

Graphics: ATI Radeon x1600

vatku - the upper left corner "case press" solved my problem as well, 2010 17" MBP, thanks

I guess I wonder what is the cause and why that fixes it - loose connector? static discharge?

I've been trying to fix this problem for a while now, and have opened up my computer a few times to play around with different options that are stated here and on other forums.

From what I can tell, the hard-press of the keyboard corners, are just adding pressure (maybe realigning some connections?) to the inverter and display data cables. Some others mentioned loose connections, or bad wires, but from my visual inspections there was nothing for me to solder.

Bunngoun An, I just tried your suggestion, but it doesn't seem to work for me. I'm glad I'm not the only one still visiting threads that were started in 2010...

I will be trying to replace both the display cable (mine looks gross) and the inverter itself in a couple of weeks.

I'll try to post up my results after I try it out!

So I just tried to replace both the display inverter and the data cable, but the issue still persists. I went to the Genuis Bar, and the person there confirmed my suspicion that it is the whole LCD screen. There is no way that it could be the logic board.

Personally, I will live with this issue since I use an external monitor just fine and the cost of replacing the LCD would range between $215-$280.

Hopefully this is helpful for someone!

Since January I have been using an external monitor after experiencing same issues with the red lines where black should be. The machine a Macbook Pro 15" Late 2006 MA610LL A1211 was dropped prior the monitor picture problem. So, little by little I have replaced the monitor back light, inverter, LVGS cable, LCD screen and I/O Board and nothing has changed. All this I did at different times. So, I gave up. It works fine as a desktop with an external monitor.

The monitor on my mbp A1211 got fixed. It seems that the problem for the black screen was the inverter cables from the hinge clutch. Now the red lines where black should be are still there but I am happy to be able to use my computer in one piece.

Thank you very much Vatku! You are a genius!

Me and my girlfriend had the same problems with blue dots on white colors and red vertical dots on black screen/backgrounds on our Mac Book Pro laptop. I pressed and pushed on the connection between the LCD screen and the key board, and this solved the problem!

I am happy! :-)

Anything X1600 based that is still in use should be mercy killed. Please move on from this platform. All these chips were terrible when they were new, much less TEN YEARS later, and no new chips are available so even with a BGA rework station there is no saving these machines. Even if you find a magical way to 3D print these chips you will kill the junk VRAM on these boards trying to replace it so retire 820-1881 and 820-2054 boards to nearest trash can before they cause you more misery.

I had the same exact problem where all the deep blacks which show up as red lines. I opened up the back of the Mac bookcase and unplugged the LCD cable in the top right corner. I then wiped down the connectors with alcohol, plugged it back in and secured it with the small metal spring. Works perfectly now. Hopefully it'll last. Thanks a bunch for the tip.

THANK YOU VATKU!!!!!!I tripped over my macbook pro purchased in 2010 and it took a nasty fall. The colors of the background screen was flickering red. I did what Vatku said . Close the lid of your mac and push down on the upper, left corner with your left hand(near where the esc key is).I heard a a snap, opened up the mac and it was back to normal

Lol - my MacBook pro fell from a considerable height onto it's side and I thought this was going to be a permanent problem with the red lines. TBH I was just happy the thing still worked! Now after picking the thing up by the screen and dropping it back down from about 5 inches it worked!!! Thanks so much for you recommendation - so pleased!!